a senioritis paper

Believe it or not, this setup--movie, Big Gulp, and popcorn--is for a big research assignment.

For my senior capstone class I'm required to write a 15- to 20-page research paper. Not feeling too motivated for this assignment, several weeks ago I settled on a topic that would prove engaging while still leaving room for some senioritis. My thesis: As a culture, we subconsciously recognize the practical use of the fantastic [the uncertainty between real and unreal] and harness it through television and film, penetrating our own psyches and asking the haunting questions that pertain to life, death, and the very nature of our being.

Once put through a senioritis filter this reads: I came up with a topic that has simultaneous academic validity and entertainment value. About half of my research is watching and taking notes on select episodes of "House," select episodes of "The X-Files," Just Like Heaven, and The Prestige. My professor thinks this is a great topic and looks forward to seeing where my research takes me. After having refined my argument and research a little more, I'm actually excited about this topic. A lot. It combines my class subject with something I legitimately enjoy, pop culture. I'll be leaving college on an academic and research triumph, I believe.

Finally after 18 or so years of continual formal education, I can say, "Yes, Mom, I can watch TV before finishing my homework because watching TV is my homework."

winner, winner, chicken dinner

My twenty-first birthday is on Tuesday, and on Friday I had a party with my friends. We had hamburgers with homemade buns (courtesy of Grandma) and IBC root beer (we felt it was appropriate considering this particular birthday--IBC is the closest I ever want to come to beer) for dinner and homemade brownies (again, courtesy of Grandma) with ice cream for dessert.

Then we opened presents, which were so generous! Sea shells from Florida, Disney World paraphernalia, and a shell necklace from Universal studios from Toribio; twenty-one things for twenty-one years old from Lauren, including cute pens, a polka dot journel, the Hilary Weeks book, nail polish, a pumice stone, nail files, nail clippers, ice cream bowls, ice cream sprinkles, marachino cherries, chocolate shell sauce, caramel sauce, and pina colada mix; seasons one through five of "Monk," courtesy of excellent present orchestration by Rachelle and from Rachelle, Ben, Mike, Duncan, and Cheyne; and a way cute lamp for my apartment from Liz.

After presents and dessert, we headed downstairs to play some Cranium Pop 5. (If you don't know about this game or haven't played it, it's pretty much the best Cranium game ever, plus you can play a secondary game with the point chips. Just ask Jess and Diana. We're pros.) We had enough people to play boys versus girls, and naturally, the girls won. :D We always had a slight lead--the boys did keep us on our toes. I think the best plays of the evening included Emily's cameo (charade) of Cool Ranch Doritos, Duncan's cameo of the slogan "Give a hoot, don't pollute," Tori's sculptorades of Air Jordans, and my letter line-up for Kevin Bacon. I give the hardest play of the night to Michael for trying (sadly, unsuccessfully) to letter line-up "Bridget Jones's Diary."

Our last activity of the evening was watching the movie "21"--an appropriate choice for the party.It was a most stellar night, and I had such a fun time seeing all my friends again before I leave for Provo this week. The party on Friday reminded me that I really do have amazing friends: they're fun, kind, generous, thoughtful, and more. Also, I remembered that I do love birthdays!

Operation Santa Fe--Days 4, 5, and 6

The last half of Operation Santa Fe went pretty well, considering:

• Church on Sunday. This was Emily's first day back.
• I made Parmesan chicken, white rice, and carrots for dinner. Emily made the biscuits. Jacquelyn came over for dinner.
• Sunday night we watched "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade."
• Monday morning, Jacquelyn and I went up to Crown Hill to go running, and Sarah rode her bike alongside.
• Sarah went to Marilyn Fowler's house in the evening and spent the night--score
• Monday was cleaning day. Sarah had a fit because I wouldn't let her eat ice cream for breakfast . . . figure that one out.
• Monday, we discovered who the peeing culprit was. All throughout OSF, one of the dogs (we also were watching Grandma and Grandpa's dog, Tyrone) kept peeing everywhere. Because we never were able to catch them in the act, I didn't know which dog to scold, so I didn't scold any dog. We had our suspicions, but no confirmations. Monday night, I was watching TV and I heard a whizzing sound behind me. I turned around to see my suspicions confirmed: Tyrone. He was the whizzer. I was so mad. And he did it again on Tuesday. I was not sad to see Tyrone go . . . .
  
• My friend Cheyne came over on Monday night, and he, Emily, and I went out to ice cream, and then came back to our house and watched "Stranger Than Fiction," (which I loved by the way--I'd never seen it before).
  
• Tuesday I basically just hung out. Sarah was still at Marilyn's all day, I vacuumed, I scrapbooked, I waited anxiously for Mom and Dad to get home.

They've been back for a couple days now, and I've decided I'm perfectly okay not being the mom. Mom can have that job back. :)

Operation Santa Fe--Day 2

Day 2 of being the fill-in mom at home was pretty good. I had a dentist appointment at 10, and Sarah went over to a friend's house for a sleepover starting at 11:30 in the morning! Talk about a score for both of us. Sarah got to have a blast going swimming, playing Guitar Hero, and sleeping in a tent while I got to go to a movie and have a friend over without having to worry about whether she was okay, fed, alive, or bored. I had an interview to reactivate my temp agency account which went well--they were very impressed by the fact that I edit, so I'm hoping I can get a summer position doing some kind of editing. Later in the afternoon, I went to see Get Smart with my friend Michael and his sisters. (One of his sisters is dating this guy, but neither of them can drive, so Michael has the pleasure of chauffeuring and chaperoning their dates--ha!) The movie was SO funny--I was smiling or laughing the entire time. I wouldn't normally pair Steve Carrel or Anne Hathaway together, but it worked! It was a great movie, and I would definitely recommend it.


After the movie, Michael and I headed back to my house, where I made Rice Krispie treats for everyone (everyone includes Michael, John, Nick, and me). Then we watched Juno and the extended version of That Thing You Do--it was a great night! I'm way tired because I didn't get to bed until 1:30, and I had to wake up early to pick up Sarah at 8:45 because she has a Primary activity this morning--good grief. I just got out of the shower and have absolutely no motivation to do anything at all. Alas, I do have to make my room presentable and unpacking-free because Emily comes home from CA today (hallelujah--that is definitely not sarcastic. I only got to see her for about 12 hours after I got home and then she left). Well, I'm off to try and be productive . . .

graduation celebration!

It really doesn't seem like that long ago that I graduated from high school, but two years later, I'm no longer straight out of high school, and now I find myself coming home to go my sister's graduation. I was able to fly home on Thursday morning and spent four full days in Denver with my family. It was so much fun just to be home and spend time with my family. Here's the weekend recap:

Thursday:

• spent time with Rachelle
• went to TJMaxx with Mom to buy a graduation present for Emily. I didn't find what I was looking for, but I did find a super cute dress for $20!
• watched the season finale of "Law and Order"
  
  
  

Friday:

• graduation!!
• homemade hamburgers and buns with root beer floats for dessert at Grandma's
• watched "The Holiday"
  
  
  
  

Saturday:

• shopping at Macy's
• "Indiana Jones" with the kids and our neighbor Nick. Flesh-eating ants=sick
• rewatched the season finale of "The Office" ("Hazing is a great way to show a new employee that she is neither welcome nor liked"--ha!)
  
  

Sunday:

• church in the Applewood Ward
• hanging out with Mom and Emily while getting ready for dinner
• spending a bit of time with Rachelle because she came over for a bit
• ate a delicious dinner of talapia (spelling?) fish and lemon pasta--mmm!!! Oh yeah, and yellow cake for dessert
• drive to see some of the houses that Mom's boss builds--way cool houses
  
• movie night with just the family: "August Rush"--so good
  
  

It was pretty much an amazing weekend, and a taunting teaser for the summer. Basically when I left, I felt like the weekend was saying, "Ha! Sucker! Still 3ish more weeks of school--mwa hahahahahahahaha!!!!" Still a great weekend though :)

I bless the rains down in Africa

I think that everyone needs a bit of excitement on the everyday level, and I think one of the most effective ways to do this is to make certain days special. Yesterday, as deemed by Katelyn and me, was Safari Day.

Safari Day started with a trip up to Salt Lake to visit the Hogle Zoo. So, my whole apartment (pictured below: me, Jenica, Emily, and Katelyn), and Katelyn's man friend Alex, all drove up to Salt Lake and spent the afternoon exploring the Hogle Zoo. It was the perfect weather for such an excursion, and we felt very comfortable temperature-wise walking around the zoo. Some of the animals were particularly active: the elephants were eating hay they stashed in their tusks, and we got to see the elephants take water through their noses and redeposit it in their mouths. I hadn't actually ever seen that before! There were way cute baby giraffes, and I steered clear of the chimpanzees (reference chimpanzee post). I started getting a headache about mid-afternoon, but it wasn't too bad.


It was such a fun day! I spent time reading a bunch of the animal plaques, which were pretty interesting, but because of my refined editing skills, I noticed several editorial errors. There was the inconsistent use of the serial (or Oxford) comma (that's the comma placed before the conjunction at the end of a list. It's usually optional, but I like it), incorrect usages of the colon, and inconsistency in capitalization and other sorts of punctuation errors. Alex commented, "Charlotte, if they had you working for them, they'd avoid people like you." So true, so true.


We headed home from the zoo about 5:30, dropped Emily at her house in Salt Lake, and stopped by Chipotle for dinner. I dozed on the way home, and then when we got back to Provo, we got our blankets and pillows and headed up to campus for the Indoor-Outdoor movie in the Wilkinson Center ballroom. The picture below features Katelyn and I waiting for the movie to start. (The people at the desk told me when I bought the tickets that the movie started at 7, when really the doors opened at 7 and the movie started at 8. Oh well.) This year they showed "The Lion King," (hence the Safari Day--this was all inspired by this movie showing). Tickets were only a dollar, and we brought our blankets and pillows to make ourselves comfortable on the ballroom floor. They had free pizza and popcorn, and we saw a bunch of new movie previews (including "Walle," "Indiana Jones," and--my most looked forward to--"Twilight"), and then they turned down the house lights, turned up the volume really loud, and the "Ahhhhhhhh sven yaaaaaa wada heeeee seda mohhhhh" began "The Lion King," one of my favorite Disney movies. It was so much fun to see that movie again and to laugh at all the clever Disney wit (hahahahaha). I laughed the whole time, plus I could easily quote most of the script and could sing along with all the songs--it was amazing.


So, Safari Day was a huge success. On a beautiful Saturday afternoon and evening, what more relaxing, enjoyable, and nostalgic experience could you have?? You should have a Safari Day sometime--it's just great!

you're killin' me Smalls!

So, if you've seen "The Sandlot," you know it's pretty much a kids' classic, and last Saturday (I know I'm posting about this a week late . . . ) my apartment went to the baseball field where they were showing "The Sandlot" on a screen on the field. It was so much fun! It's always funny and I think every girl who's seen that movie has a crush on Benny.

ps--the two girls besides Katelyn and me are our new, socially ept roommates, Emily and Jenica. from left to right: Emily, me, Katelyn, Jenica.

my christmas wishes

So Mom had us all make Christmas Wishes lists and I just finished mine yesterday. They all had to comprise of Big Wishes, Medium Wishes, Small Wishes, and Christmas Goals. They didn't necessarily have to be realistic, but it was fun! I might try this every year!

Mine looked really cute with colors and little drawings, but as a PDF file it won't upload and I'm currently too lazy to take a picture, put it onto my computer, and upload it to blogger so here's just the lists and not any of the fun aesthetic-ness.

Big Wishes

• a Mac computer **it can't be one that restarts itself and the "i" key has to work**
• a car that can get to Provo and back -- reliably
• no more hairglobs in my apartment
• $360 for my violin lessons next semester
• any kind of cooking stuff (e.g. pots/pans, meat fork, whatever!)
• a DVR for my apartment

Medium Wishes

• books, books, and more books!! (this is harking back to a Christmas list I made when I was 9 or 10--it makes us laugh :) )
  
• rain boots (refer to previous post)
• trendy clothes
• "The Office" season 3
• an apron
• the end of the writers' strike :)

Small Wishes

• big earrings
• any scrapbooking supplies
• headbands
• iTunes money
• cookbooks
• some flats
• cute skirts/tops
• scrapbook magazines/book
• movies (any I would like--"Nancy Drew" if it ever comes out--oo "Bride and Prejudice!)
• apartment decor
• slippers
• long necklaces

Christmas Goals

• stay motivated and finish out the semester strong
• pray and read my scriptures diligently
• find ways to quietly serve others
• spend my money wisely and responsibly--even though there are many fun things to buy!
• remember to count my blessings
• better implement the Atonement in my life

Important Dates (this is one I added :) )

• December 13: last day of class!
• December 20: last final!
• December 21: HOME!!!
  

So those are my Christmas wishes this year--some of them are realistic and some are not but that's why they're wishes I guess! Any Christmas wishes you have this year, realistic or otherwise??

oh ps--I just watched"Waitress" with my roommates and loved it! Just thought I'd throw that out there if you're looking for a movie to rent--it's funny, thought-provoking, and sweet :)